Human Genome Decoded: The Map of Life Revealed
Scientists from the Human Genome Project (publicly funded) and Celera Genomics (privately funded) jointly announced the completion of a working draft of the human genome on June 26, 2000, at the White House with President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair participating via satellite. The achievement mapped approximately 3.1 billion DNA base pairs across 23 chromosome pairs. The project cost $2.7 billion over 13 years; Craig Venter's Celera completed a rival draft in three years using the whole-genome shotgun sequencing method. The "completion" was actually about 90% of the genome; a truly complete sequence, including centromeric regions and other difficult sections, was not achieved until 2022 by the T2T Consortium. The genome project has since enabled personalized medicine, forensic identification, ancestry tracing, and thousands of advances in biomedical research.
June 26, 2000
26 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on June 26
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